Colossians 2:22

which all are to perish with the using;)] Lit., which are all for corruption in the consumption. I.e., the things which are thus forbidden as soul-tainting are things merely material, not moral, and this is evidenced by their merely material destiny physical dissolution in the course of natural use. Cp. Matthew 15:17. This clause should be bracketed apart, as in R.V.

Observe St Paul's instructive opposite use, in an opposite connexion, of the same consideration, 1 Corinthians 6:13. There an assertor of a distorted "liberty" is met by the thought that alike "meats" and "belly" are to cease to exist with the present order of things; then why for their sake violate real claims of purity?

after the commandments, &c. The thought returns to the prohibitive formulas; these are not utterances of God's will, but "according to," of the kind of, on the scale of, merely human rule and principle. Obviously, so far as any of them were Mosaic, St Paul would fully recognize their Divine authority in their own period and for their own purpose. But the period was over, the purpose was fulfilled in Christ. To impose them now was to put God's edict to man's arbitrary use.

" Of men:" cp. Matthew 15:9; Mark 7:7; and see Isaiah 29:13, the passage quoted by our Lord, and doubtless here in St Paul's mind. The LXX. there agrees almost verbatim with the words here, more so than with the quotations in the Gospels.